First Steps of Rustavi Innovation Hub
The study tour in Poland turned out to be highly inspirational and motivational for our team. So the first thing we did was identifying the new challenges and obstacles ahead. We acknowledged, that for an idea to become a successfully implemented project, the members of Rustavi Innovation Hub need to learn new skills and obtain new tools. And as we are determined to make a big impact, the best way would be transferring the new “know-how” to others (potentially) involved in the Rustavi Revitalization process and future projects in other municipalities. During the work meeting, we also agreed, that we need to come up with our own operational model, and delegate tasks and roles based on competencies and interests to implement projects efficiently.
So, for the next meeting, we came together at Rustavi Scout Center to hold a workshop organized by Innovative Service Laboratory ( ServiceLab) of Public Service Development Agency ( PSDA) and UNDP Georgia. We decided that learning new skills would be more effective if we started working on one of our ideas right away. Hence, exploring Innovation Canvas and Test Your Assumptions ( UNDP Hackers Toolkit) turned out to be more engaging and productive. Both canvases are designed to diagnose the problem precisely, come up with and test several hypotheses and then choose from or combine respective solutions.
The idea we picked as our first project focuses on street addressing of one neighborhood in Rustavi and thus solving numerous problems caused by the lack of street signs indicating the numbers or names of streets and buildings. By utilizing new canvases we came up with solutions and detailed action plan with dates and names (of responsible persons) defined. The working process turned out to be uncommon and close to unique, so we decided to transform this “hub style” process into a canvas and add it to our toolbox for future projects.
As this is the first project for Rustavi Innovation Hub, UNDP Georgia and ServiceLab will be our mentors throughout the process, which will prepare us for upcoming projects. It’s important to mention, that the project will engage the local population and businesses. Locals will be involved in the project implementation from initial research to “product” design stages — emphasizing the Hub’s intention to deliver people-oriented results.
By the end of the workshop, we agreed to create a policy document for the Innovation Hub, that will act as a handbook and will be updated along with our operational model.
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Originally published at https://medium.com on June 25, 2018.
